Future Of Agriculture

This quarter of the Future of Agriculture podcast is made possible by Case IH: https://www.caseih.com/en-us/unitedstatesOcean Mist Farms: https://www.oceanmist.com/Today’s episode features Mark Munger of Ocean Mist Farms in Castroville, California in the Salinas Valley. Mark shares a story that I think is very relevant to a lot of agriculture production today, all over the world. Although they’ve grown a great business to produce consistent, high quality, affordable, safe, nutritious commodities, they still face challenges. Rising costs, regulations, competition, and consumers whose expectations for convenience have gone up dramatically. These headwinds have propelled the company in the direction of innovation, and Mark is going to share that with us today. For background, Mark Munger is the director of marketing at Ocean Mist Farms, where he has been for the last 2 ½ years. But Mark is definitely not new to the industry - he has worked in fresh produce for almost 40 years, including positions at the Pro

This quarter of the Future of Agriculture podcast is made possible by Case IH: https://www.caseih.com/en-us/unitedstatesHello fellow ag nerds. Today’s special episode is what I like to call a spotlight. Instead of our normal format of a 40 minute long form interview, it’s just a short peak into something interesting. The topics for these spotlights are determined in collaboration with our quarterly presenting sponsor, which this quarter is Case IH. Dan Klein is the Customer Insights Lead at Case IH and CNH. Dan grew up on a farm in Southwest Wisconsin, where he stays actively involved, working with his brother on the family farm. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s in Engineering Management, which have supported his 17-year career at CNH. What I wanted to know from Dan is how a company of their size is incorporating feedback from customers into the design of their machinery. They have a “built by farmers” promise, but how are they actually executing on that? Br

This quarter of the Future of Agriculture podcast is made possible by Case IH: https://www.caseih.com/en-us/unitedstatesAgricultural Economic Insights: https://aei.ag/Today's episode features David Widmar of Agricultural Economic Insights. David first appeared on the show a year ago on episode 399, which ended up being one of my most listened-to episodes of the year. Today, we discuss the current state of the ag economy, the margin squeeze that farmers are facing and where that places us on the economic cycle that commodities tend to follow. We also talk about some key ideas and mental models that David has written about for how to manage risk during this challenging time for the industry. As background, David Widmar is an agricultural economist specializing in ag trends and the farm economy. Through his research, he supports agribusinesses and farmers in their strategic and planning efforts. David’s current work can be found at Agricultural Economic Insights, aei.ag, which he co-founded with Dr. Brent G

This quarter of the Future of Agriculture podcast is made possible by Case IH: https://www.caseih.com/en-us/unitedstatesMach: https://www.mach.io/Today’s episode features Colin Hurd who is the CEO of Mach. Colin first appeared on this show back on episode 180 in November of 2019. At that time he had just sold his previous company, Smart Ag, to Raven Industries. Colin continued working for Raven Industries until 2022, when he left and eventually helped to bring together a partnership merger to form Mach. Mach works with Original Equipment Manufacturers (otherwise known as OEMs). These are all of the companies that manufacture equipment, in our context farm equipment. Mach helps these OEMs that want to incorporate autonomy into their products. This again is part of an insight I had at the FIRA USA show, which is that there is a whole emerging industry of companies that exist to service the robotics and automation companies so that they can bring their solutions to farmers. Mach is one of those companies.&n

This quarter of the Future of Agriculture podcast is made possible by Case IH: https://www.caseih.com/en-us/unitedstatesJanette Barnard's Prime Future Newsletter: https://primefuture.substack.com/Future of Agriculture YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@FutureOfAgDr. G. Kee Jim is the founding partner of Feedlot Health Management Services Ltd. (FHMS). Dr. Jim’s cattle feeding companies (G.K. Jim Farms, Cattlinc Inc, Silverado Cattle Inc, Taweel Cattle Company Ltd, Korova Feeders Ltd, Diamond Feeders, Quality Beef Producers LP, CanTex Feeders LP, Tierra Blanca Cattle Feeders LP, and Ordway Cattle Feeders LP) are major players in the Canadian and United States cattle industries through ownership of cows, backgrounding cattle, grass cattle, feedlot cattle, and feedlots. In addition, Kee has served on the board of directors of several beef industry groups and as an Adjunct Professor in the Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and VERO at Texas A&M University.Brought to you by Case IH: Case IH des

This quarter of the Future of Agriculture podcast is made possible by Case IH: https://www.caseih.com/en-us/unitedstatesSo much of what we talk about on this show comes together in the cab of a tractor to leverage technology and make the best possible decisions for the farm. And I really haven’t spent enough time exploring the innovations surrounding the tractor itself. We take it for granted a little bit, but it really is the hub of a modern farming operation. The Magnum Tractor has been a flagship of the Case IH brand since it debuted in 1987, and Joe does a great job of talking about the work that goes into making this essential piece of equipment the best it can be. Some background on Joe Miller:He grew up on a farm in Rochester, Indiana and has always enjoyed working with equipment from a young age. This led to his current career with CNH which has included  business management, new equipment sales, and parts and service sales. Joe has an MBA from the Indiana Kelley School of Business and a mas

Sponsored by Case IH: https://www.caseih.com/The VINE: https://thevine.io/Farmhand Ventures: https://www.farmhandventures.com/The Reservoir: https://www.reservoir.co/F3 Innovate: https://www.f3innovate.org/Today you’ll hear from three people: Hannah Johnson, Connie Bowen, and Danny Bernstein. Hannah is the Industry Lead for The VINE at  UC Ag and Natural Resources. Connie is the founding general partner at Farmhand Ventures who works with The VINE. Danny is CEO and managing partner at Reservoir, which includes Reservoir Ventures, and nonprofit incubators, Reservoir Farms & Labs, which is what he’ll be talking about today. I attended FIRA-USA this past October to try to better understand what’s happening in ag robotics and automation. What I didn’t expect was to see some really fascinating public-private partnership efforts that I think fill some real needs in agriculture innovation. But as luck would have it, that’s what happened, and so I wanted to put together this episode to highlight it. I t

Featured Podcast Episodes: David Friedberg on Joining Ohalo Genetics as CEO, Gene Editing Technology, and AgTech Trends by The Modern AcreHow Syngenta is Thinking About AI with Feroz Sheikh by Agtech - So What?The Agriculture Economy: How Bad Is It and Where Is It Going? by The Business of AgricultureCoaching Farmers for Profit: Athletes Have Coaches Why Shouldn't You? by Farm4ProfitNavigating the De-Commoditization of Ag with Daniel Oh of AgCertain by The Pacesetter PodA New Direction in Florida Citrus with Benny McLean by Regenerative Agriculture PodcastEmerging Trends in Sustainable Packaging with Max Teplitski and Andrew Stephens by Fresh Takes on TechLinks to other resources mentioned: FoA 395: Where is Agriculture Headed? Insights From Six Different Ag Podcasts'Biological' Is Not A Category (it's the future of agriculture)The Changing Farm Economy with David Widmar of Agricultural Economic InsightsAsk The Ag Economist With Trey Malone, Ph.D.Farm Business Strategy with Kristjan HebertImplementing a Farm

Conservation Technology Information Center: https://www.ctic.org/Regrow Ag: https://www.regrow.ag/ The Nature Conservancy: https://www.nature.org/en-us/FoA 248: Regrow Merges Agronomic Insights with Sustainability MetricsToday’s episode is made possible thanks to the support of the Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC). Formed in 1982 to support the widespread use of economically and environmentally beneficial agricultural systems, CTIC’s mission is to champion, promote and provide information on climate-smart technologies and sustainable agricultural systems that conserve and enhance soil, water, air and wildlife resources and are productive and profitable.Members of this non-profit organization include farmers, policy makers, regulators, academic researchers, agribusiness leaders, conservation group personnel, farm media, and others. It is supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, and other public entities. Thank you very much to the

Bloomfield Robotics: https://bloomfield.ai/Kubota North America Corporation Acquires US-based AgTech StartupFOA 228: Solving the Rural Connectivity Problem with Dr. Sara Spangelo of SwarmQuick note: I am still looking for a couple of brands to partner with in 2025. If your company might be interested in positioning yourself as an innovator in the ag industry, I would love to talk with you about my quarterly presenting sponsorship package. This is an exclusive, I only work with a maximum of four companies per year, and I’m hoping to have all of them locked in by the end of the first quarter of 2025. So if your company is doing innovative work and you’d like to share that with thousands of leaders in the ag industry, please reach out to me at tim@aggrad.com or via LinkedIn or Twitter. I’m happy to share details. Ok, now back to today’s conversation with Mark DeSantis. As I mentioned, Mark was first on the show about four years ago on episode 228 in October of 2020. Since that time, Mark and team grew Bloom

Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves by Nicola TwilleyPrime Future Newsletter by Janette BarnardThe Great Beef Bonanza and the Fall of the Cattle Kingdom"Our ancestors learned to control fire before modern humans even evolved. But our ability to command cold at will dates back a little more than 150 years. Mechanical cooling refrigeration produced by human artifice as opposed to the natural chill offered by weather dependent snow and ice wasn't achieved until the mid 1700s and wasn't commercialized until the late 1800s, and it wasn't domesticated until the 1920s."That is a quote from the book that we're gonna be talking about here today, Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves by Nicola Twilley. I'm very excited to dive into this book. There's so much here on the history of refrigeration and we take for granted how much refrigeration has changed our food system and our world in a number of profound ways.But I'm also excited to not be tacklin

Tenacious Ventures: https://tenacious.ventures/Farmhand Ventures: https://www.farmhandventures.com/“Navigating a future of cross sectional forces” (AgriFutures Australia Report): https://agrifutures.com.au/product/navigating-a-future-of-cross-sectoral-forces/Ag’s Scifi (and Non-Fiction) Future: Horizon Scanning… so what? with Shane Thomas: https://tenacious.ventures/insights/ags-scifi-and-non-fiction-future-horizon-scanning-so-what-with-shane-thomasCitrus Moves North with Farmer and Orangepreneur Lindy Savelle: https://tenacious.ventures/insights/citrus-moves-north-with-farmer-and-orangepreneur-lindy-savelleFoA 348: Investing in the Future of Fertilizer with Sarah Nolet of Tenacious Ventures: https://futureofagriculture.com/episode/foa-348-investing-in-the-future-of-fertilizer-with-sarah-nolet-of-tenacious-ventures-agtech-so-what-crossoverFoA 112: Accelerating AgTech with Sarah Nolet of AgThentic: https://futureofagriculture.com/episode/future-of-agriculture-112-accelerating-agtech-with-sarah-nolet-of-agthent

Niqo Robotics: https://niqorobotics.com/Five Questions About The Ag Robotics Revolution (FIRA USA Takeaways)Today’s episode was recorded live at FIRA USA in Woodland, California. If you’re not familiar with FIRA it is the premier event for agricultural robotics and autonomous solutions in action. If you’d like more of my reflections and takeaways from the event go back and listen to episode 439.But I wanted to feature this interview with Jaisimha Rao as a standalone episode for a few reasons: first, I think his story is interesting as a finance guy turned farmer turned agtech founder. He also uncovers some very real insights about agtech that he’s learned over the past 10 years or so in this industry. And they are a great example of an ag robotics company that is making real impact on farms, not just doing demos and talking about what the future might hold. Because what I’ve been most excited about lately is the commercialization of ag robotics and automation. Walking around FIRA last month, my first rea

Geco Strategic Weed Management: https://geco-ag.com/Today’s episode features a new tool in the toolbox for farmers fighting weed pressure. As I’ve had conversations with farmers throughout the country, there is no doubt that the costs of weed control is a major pain point. This takes a lot of different forms, from the hand labor crews in California’s vegetable crops, to herbicide-resistant kochia in the middle of US and Canada to just the sheer cost of chemistry that’s impacting the bottom line of farmers everywhere, it’s certainly an area ripe for solutions. For the past few years, Dr. Greg Stewart has been working on a very interesting solution to use data to predict weed pressure. This is interesting because it’s addressing a major problem in weed control, but it’s also interesting because it embodies what where we all hope this “ag data revolution” is going: towards predicting problems before we experience them. This opens the door up for more proactive weed management solutions, in some cases before

FIRA USA: https://fira-usa.com/SwarmFarm Robotics: https://www.swarmfarm.com/Robotics Plus: https://www.roboticsplus.co.nz/Bluewhite: https://www.bluewhite.ai/Agtonomy: https://www.agtonomy.com/Western Growers' Financial Case Studies: https://www.wga.com/innovation/case-studies/A couple weeks ago I had the chance to attend FIRA USA, which is the gathering for ag robotics and autonomous equipment in agriculture. And autonomy has been on my mind a lot lately. You’ve seen an uptick in autonomy related episodes this past year or so, featuring companies like Verdant Robotics, Carbon Robotics and Sabanto all on different episodes. The reason for this is I’m definitely getting the sense that many of these solutions are starting to reach a tipping point from “wouldn’t it be cool if” to “this is actually being purchased and used on farms”. And that’s exciting. So while I was at the event I recorded about a dozen conversations and asked some of the questions I have about what I’m choosing to call the “ag robotics

NuCicer: https://www.nucicer.com/Growing Pulse Crops Podcast: https://growingpulsecrops.com/If we were to re-think the food system and start with human nutrition as the goal, we would likely want food ingredients that are affordable, delicious, high in protein and high in fiber. Chickpeas fit the bill. Kathryn Cook and the team at NuCicer are developing genetics for chickpeas with more protein to make them more functional and appealing to food companies. But can they pass enough of that value back to the growers to scale?There’s a lot to this story and NuCicer is taking a really interesting approach to creating the rotational crop of the future that is nutritious, delicious, affordable and profitable for farmers. Today’s episode has a lot of fascinating aspects to it, all of which I think give us some interesting threads to pull on when thinking about where agriculture is headed. On the surface, NuCicer is crop genetics company working with chickpea, or what some of you might know as garbanzo bean,

ChrysaLabs: https://www.chrysalabs.com/Today’s episode features Sam Fournier, CEO and co-founder of ChyrsaLabs. I had the chance to briefly meet Sam at World AgriTech. Thank you to Sachi Desai and the Bayer team for the intro. And when I heard what they were doing, I immediately asked if he’d ever be willing to come on the podcast. This idea of providing real time soil information on nutrients has been tried before and as far as I know the tech just hasn’t worked. But ChrysaLabs has been at this since 2018 and have a track record of reliably providing this information, which is something that I think is super exciting for the future of agriculture. I wanted to ask more though about how the tech works, how affordable it could be for farmers and agronomists, what impact this could have on management decisions, and where Sam wants to take the company from here. For some background: Prior to founding ChrysaLabs in 2018, Sam held strategic positions in the development of smart cities implementation projects,

I’ve never been to space, but it has been said that from outer space there are three man-made technologies visible: the Great Wall of China and electric illumination of the world’s largest cities are the first two. The third are the green crop circles created by center pivot irrigation. It has been said that the center pivot irrigation system is “perhaps the most significant mechanical innovation in agriculture since the replacement of draft animals by the tractor”. Today, over 50% of the irrigated field acres in North America are using the center pivot concept. And other modern agricultural countries are catching up, such as Brazil, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. It’s no coincidence that this agricultural technology was invented by someone who farmed on top of the largest aquifer in the western hemisphere: the Ogallala Aquifer which is sometimes called the High Plains Aquifer. Geologists estimate the aquifer was formed about 5 million years ago by ancient erosion from the

Voyage Foods: https://voyagefoods.com/Jennifer Barney's Business of Food Newsletter: https://jenniferbarney.substack.com/I continue to be interested in pursuing episodes that are more on the food side of the industry. I think at first glance some of these stories might make you question whether it really belongs on an agricultural podcast. But I really believe consumer interest and food trends will drive the future of agriculture just as much if not more than any ag technology will. So it’s really important for all of us in agriculture to keep a close watch on these trends and connect the dots about what impact this could have on our industry. Guest hosting today’s episode is Jennifer Barney. Jennifer has been very generous with her time to bring us several episodes over the years, all focused on food companies. In the past she has featured companies like: Teffola, WonderCow, Alexandre Family Farm, Bibamba, Ugly Fruit Company, Neutral Foods and Seal the Seasons. She is a successful food entrepreneur

Dr. Trey Malone Profile: https://ag.purdue.edu/directory/tjmalone#:~:text=Trey%20Malone%20is%20an%20agri,on%20agri%2Dfood%20supply%20chains.Trey's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/treymalone MS-MBA Joint Degree: https://agribusiness.purdue.edu/degrees/ms-mba/Dr. Trey Malone is an agri-food economist and the Boehlje Chair in Managerial Economics for Agribusiness in the department of agricultural economics at Purdue University. His work focuses generally on strategic marketing and strategic decision making especially as it relates to what universities can do for industry. He has published over 60 research articles in outlets including Food Policy, Journal of Business Venturing Insights, and the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Before Purdue, he worked as an ag economist with the University of Arkansas, and before that at Michigan State University. His insights have been featured in popular press outlets, including the New York Times, TIME Magazine, CNBC, CNN, USA Today, Fast Company, and Po